A moment of silence. He doesn't move, doesn't react to my touch.
"They thought I wouldn’t make it. The bullet tore through my uterus and internal gonads. I spent two months in the hospital, going in and out of comas. I looked like a corpse. My parents were already preparing themselves for the possibility that I wouldn’t survive. They brought in the best doctors, and eventually one of them really took charge and pulled me through the worst of it. Unfortunately, sepsis attacked my glands. They had to be removed."
"I’m so sorry, Blue…"
"That’s the past. It can’t be changed. You don’t need to say that, those are just the facts," he says, dry, almost defensive.
I open my mouth to say something, but he's quicker.
"The recovery was long, and my psyche… fell apart. Slowly, the consequences of what happened started to sink in. That I would never be able to have children. That I wouldn’t develop like other omegas, that my hormone levels would be low. That I would never go into heat, or build nests. That I might have trouble using AO vocalizations, that my sense of smell could be weaker, and I wouldn’t be able to sense others’ Allure or find my True Mate that way… that entire world was lost to me. And it was a lot."
Gathering courage, I gently trace my fingers over his shoulder blade again. The touch again, very light, although a bit more palpable than the last one.
Blue stays silent for a moment.
"Then came rebellion. Anger. Like my brothers, I was homeschooled, but I became a nightmare for my teachers. Disrespectful, refusing to learn, ignoring them. Then I got close to two omega teenage sons of our butler, who would sometimes come into the kitchen in our mansion. Cigarettes, alcohol, then weed. I did all of it. After that, they brought me stronger drugs…"
I hear that in a certain state of shock. This part of his story I would never have suspected.
"Wow. It’s hard to imagine you having… a phase like that. Looking at you now."
"I had anger in me, Gabriel. Immense. My parents noticed everything, of course. They were furious and, in despair, tried to forbid it, but I didn’t care. I found ways around their rules, sneaking out, meeting those omegas, getting whatever they had. One day I went too far. I woke up in the hospital."
"An overdose?"
"Yes. I almost died again. Maybe that was the turning point."
"I’m sorry… that you were hurting. So much…" I have an upsetting feeling that my words come out too flat. He deserves more.
"Still, even after I woke up, I told my father I hated him. That his fucking wish had come true, that I would never be an omega sitting at home with children…"
I need to do something, show him more compassion, but I struggle with finding ways to do it within the boundaries he set for us. I only gently stroke his back again, greatly shocked by the whole situation, that he’s opening up like this.
"My father… strangely enough, accepted my anger. He apologized. Said he would give up his entire fortune if he could restore what I had lost. His words… meant something to me, I guess they healed part of my hurt. After that, my parents handled things differently. They sent me to a specialized rehab, with intensive therapy. They hired the best."
Blue pauses briefly to take a deeper breath. "For several months, those people worked on me, rebuilding me, reshaping me, almost reprogramming me. I came out of that rehab different in a way, surely more at peace with my situation. One of the therapists told me I was too talented to waste, that it would be a shame to lose my mind, that I could become a geneticist, a physiologist, find a way to regenerate tissues, organs… that planted a seed of hope in me."
"That’s what decided your career?"
"In a way, yes. Although at first, it was probably just another form of escaping reality. But I immersed myself in science for years. Nothing else mattered. I managed to develop several techniques for tissue regeneration, including nerve and muscle tissue, and I received awards for it. But the problem was that an omega’s uterus doesn’t come from human genes. It forms from a portion of an alien genome, and that is… complicated, to put it lightly."
"Did you truly believe you could rebuild your… reproductive system?"
"For a while. But then… I hit a wall. Human tissue would have to generate alien tissue, and that wasn’t simple. There’s an entire aspect of the alien genes that verges onmagic. And you can’t exactly study magic under a microscope. So when I turned thirty, another stage came. The realization that… this is my life, and it won’t change. That I will remain as I am. Even if I stop my aging, if I stay the way I looked when I started treatmentat twenty-five, my uterus won’t grow back. Neither will my gonads."
I try to gather my thoughts, to add something meaningful, something helpful or insightful, but I come up empty, my mind buzzing like a beehive.
"Was it easier then… than when you were a teenager?"
"Kind of. The process was slow, but the older we get, the easier it becomes to give things up. I had already built a career, achieved things, I felt like I was helping people, that my discoveries were saving lives. I had a purpose, even if I couldn’t have what I once wanted."
This time I grow bolder, and slide my hand along his arm and forearm resting at his side, and my fingers finally curl around his hand. It’s clenched in my grip.
"Is that why you didn’t want… a relationship?"
Silence stretches.
His heart picks up slightly, as if what he’s about to say brings him stress.
